saturday special(s): jay smooth and kevin powell

If you live in the United States and care for current events, you probably know the feast the media has had this week with R&B singer Chris Brown's latest batch of bad decisions (to put it mildly):  He freaked out after being asked some Rihanna questions on Good Morning America, and a chair ended up hitting a dressing room window, sending glass shattering onto the sidewalk.  Thankfully nobody was hurt.  The next day Brown apologized (ahem!) on BET's 106th & Park, saying basically that his actions were a reaction to feeling blindsighted by the line of questioning,  because it wasn't in line with previously agreed upon talking points, saying, "I felt like, it was like okay, they told us this, just so they could get us on the show to exploit me."



Obviously, what the young man needs more than anything else is help.  But that's not the story that sells.  It's the Look-See! story that sells most when celebrities unravel, hence the media circus spotlight, the collective How Could He?!, myriad debates about how long he should have to suffer for his past, or whether he's being treated fairly, given what Charlie Sheen has been up to (??!!!) etc, etc ...

By now you might be wondering what a post about Chris Brown's drama (with other peoples' names in the title) is doing on a beauty blog.  Well, while I couldn't escape the story (as a consumer of media), I did run into two reactions that made me feel hopeful, and made me think, Beautiful.  Check them out:

From  Jay Smooth's ILL DOCTRINE:



And writer Kevin Powell's Open Letter To Chris Brown from News One, which concludes:

"All eyes are on you because you’ve brought the world to your doorstep, my friend. The question alas, Chris, is do you want to go forward or not? And if yes to going forward, then you must know it means going to the deepest and darkest parts of your past to heal what ails you, once and for all, for the good of yourself, and for the good of those who are watching you very closely and who may learn something from what you do. Or what you do not do. The choice is yours, Chris Brown. The choice is yours—"

Both men offer in depth, heartfelt reactions to the madness of the situation.  But most importantly, they also offer constructive solutions to Chris Brown's problems, which go so much deeper than the PR of it all, and that is what I find beautiful.
Thoughts?

saturday special: man beauty, tim gunn

For enriching vocabularies everywhere, keeping it all aesthethically pleasing and standing up for what he believes in, Tim Gunn, host extraordinaire of Project Runway, is our man beauty this week.  Gunn wants designers to stop using fur in their collections and he's talking about it:

“I’m on a campaign to get as many fashion designers as possible to stop using it,” said Gunn, who is the chief creative officer of Liz Claiborne. “I’d just like to sit with them and have a talk and ask, ‘Is it really necessary?’” (ecorazzi)

To that we say, beautiful.

What do you think? Do you dabble with fur?  Fur trim? Fur from your grandmother?  If so, is it really necessary?

saturday special: man beauty, clyde

Former NBA star and now Knicks broadcaster Walt Frazier. 
They started calling him Clyde during his playing days when he bought a wide brimmed hat that reminded folks of the movie (Bonnie and Clyde.)

"The first time I wore the hat, everybody laughed at me. My teammates and, I remember, the guys on the other team, because they'd never seen anything like that. But that's part of my individuality," he says. "Like, when I was in high school, I never drank, because I'm not afraid of being ostracized from a group if there's something I don't want to do." 

-excerpt from a One On 1 segment with Bud Mishkin (on NY1)

His recently re-issued 1974 book, Rockin' Steady-A Guide to Basketball & Cool includes a chapter entitled  "A General Guide to Looking Good and Other Matters."

Need I say more?
Run to the bookstore.